


Repose

by Thorton (3370318)



Category: Death Note & Related Fandoms, Death Note (Anime & Manga)
Genre: Awkward Kissing, Canon Compliant, Fluff and Angst, M/M, Sharing a Bed, Smoking, just the slightest tinge of angst, mostly L is melodramatic. and a little mean, sort of. close enough. ok
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-08
Updated: 2019-05-08
Packaged: 2020-02-27 06:06:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,861
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18733129
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/3370318/pseuds/Thorton
Summary: “Feeling tired, Ryuzaki?” he bothered to ask, after so much time had passed he began to feel antsy. No response. Matsuda faced the detective again, but this time found him dozed off with his head lolled to the side. That answered that.Matsuda questions L's stubbornness. Set during Light and Misa's confinement.





	Repose

Matsuda couldn’t keep track of the days anymore. He mixed up dates even on his best weeks, and lost time more often since he joined the police. Now that Light, Misa and the chief were all locked up indefinitely, it felt enough like an extended stay in purgatory for everyone involved that he gave up entirely. If he were to put it bluntly, he’d say: “This sucks.”

And he did, sort of, to the man who stood shoulder-to-shoulder with him while they smoked on the hotel balcony.

Aizawa sighed, shifted on his feet, then ashed his cigarette. “It’s bullshit is what it is,” he replied. The older man made no move to mask his distaste for the direction the investigation had taken. For once, Matsuda couldn’t blame him.

They stayed there for a while, none too eager to go back inside and watch L stare at his monitors. Aizawa said it’d be more productive to watch paint dry. 

The two watched the city instead, gloomy and blue beneath a steady but thin rainfall. It came as a surprise to both of them when L stepped out onto the balcony himself, took a few unsure steps to the railing, then leaned there for a long moment. Aizawa made a pointed effort to scare L off with his body language: shoulders squared, face sour, as if that had ever worked. Matsuda only moved to give L space to stand and took another, hesitant drag.

The detective snapped to attention, pinched Matsuda’s cigarette and tossed it over the balcony. “I don’t do well with smoke,” L explained. “Nasty habit, anyway.” Matsuda wrinkled his nose, a retort on the tip of his tongue, but L’s calm, half-lidded stare pacified him.

Aizawa grumbled, stubbed out his cigarette, and headed back inside without another word.

Matsuda tried not to think about how L took up the space beside him now, close enough to feel his body heat while he stood in some strange and silent repose. The balcony railing creaked beneath their weight as L shifted to rest his chin on his arms. Matsuda looked over then, sucked in his breath, and looked away.

“Feeling tired, Ryuzaki?” he bothered to ask, after so much time had passed he began to feel antsy. No response. Matsuda faced the detective again, but this time found him dozed off with his head lolled to the side. That answered that. Matsuda picked him up under the arms and pulled him inside.

Matsuda managed to drag L halfway to an empty room before the detective roused himself enough to insist he could work. By the way he struggled to keep his eyes open, Matsuda had his doubts. Sure enough, as soon as he laid the scrawny man on a hotel bed, he was out like a light.

How many days had it been since they arrested Misa, or maybe since L had gotten any rest? Matsuda couldn’t hope to count, but assumed that L would be able to tell him down to the minute. He moved to leave, hesitated once he stepped over the door’s threshold, then sighed as he went to the windows and pulled back the curtains instead. Behind him, L twitched and made agitated noises in his sleep.

At some point Matsuda sat himself on the floor and leaned back against the bed. He closed his eyes and fell into an uneven slumber. Minutes later, or maybe hours, he blinked the bleariness away as he heard the mattress shift, then he watched L haul himself up to walk to the window.

Back to that uneasy quietness. L lost in the internal maze of his deductions, foot hooked around his opposite ankle.

“I slept too long,” he said after a while, without bothering to check the time. “Don’t do that again.”

“What? Get you to rest? You needed it,” Matsuda argued, and blew his bangs out of his eyes with some indignation.

“What I need is to keep an eye on our suspects. At any moment, one of them could confess… be it a confession of guilt, or that they know something about Kira… it’d be invaluable information to advance the investigation. Even someone as vacuous as you should know that.”

Matsuda let his head knock against the bed frame and let out a tired groan. “If they had anything to say, they would have said it already. Misa-Misa clearly doesn’t know what’s going on, and Light-kun can’t be Kira. The killings are still happening while we’re wasting our time here!”

“It’s not a waste, Matsuda-san,” L insisted, tongue pressed against his teeth and halfway to a hiss, but he kept his tone even.

“You just can’t admit that you were wrong,” Matsuda said, and clicked his tongue in turn as he stood up and settled on the edge of the bed.

L gave him an odd look. This time, the placidity drained out of his expression and left something inscrutable behind; cold, blank, with the corners of his mouth pulled into the slightest frown. L placed a hand on his face and wiped the look away, then turned his back to Matsuda. “I am right,” he said, in that smooth as silk voice of his. “I don’t know when you’ll see that, but one day you will.”

L placed his forehead to the cool glass of the window. His next words were quieter, weighted with resignation. “At this rate, probably after I’m dead.”

The way L looked, silhouetted against a dreary afternoon sky in a dim hotel room, Matsuda couldn’t stay angry at him. Really - when could he ever? He shifted guiltily at the thought.

“Don’t be like that,” Matsuda said; his best admonishment. He got up to tuck a throw blanket around L’s shoulders, even as the man stayed with his cheek against glass. He dared to smooth a palm over the detective’s forearm before he retreated, wary of overstepping a boundary. One more mistake and L would flit out of the room like a startled bird.

“I’m wrong about lots of things. You of all people would know,” Matsuda said, and stretched out his legs as he laid back on the mattress. “I don’t think we’re actually too different, Ryuzaki.”

L straightened up, grabbed a throw pillow, and threw it straight at Matsuda’s face. 

“Ahah, um, ow?”

Then L hoisted himself up onto the bed, laid himself perpendicular to Matsuda, and sighed. “Please elucidate me, Matsuda-san.”

“We’re both young!”

Matsuda cast a sidelong glance at his companion and bit his lip. The softness of L’s features became more apparent in the natural light, which haloed him in a soft glow and dappled him with the shadows of the raindrops. Lovely, Matsuda thought to himself. If he had a few less brain cells, he would’ve moved in closer.

“Like… um, it’s cool that you’re not old. Aizawa-san’s always talking about his wife and kid… the chief, er… well, he… you know. He’s like that too. I can’t relate at all… then they keep thinking I’m wet behind the ears, they don’t take me as seriously. Kinda sucks,” he said.

“You are inexperienced,” L said, and leaned his head on his arms. He looked like an owl poked out of a burrow. Matsuda suppressed the urge to reach out and pat his hair down. “They’re not wrong.”

“Thanks… Doesn’t it bother you? They don’t take you that seriously, even though you’re supposed to be the best at what you do. They think you’re some greenhorn, too. Even though you’re L! It’s kind of funny.”

“Don’t call me that,” L said, and gave Matsuda a gentle kick to the shoulder.

“Sorry, Ryuzaki.”

“May I ask what the point of all that was?”

“Um… we both mess up sometimes,” Matsuda ended, sounding less confident in his moral. “I know it’s the worst, especially when people are expecting you to mess up. But it’s okay. I mean… I get it, at least.”

“I am not wrong about this,” L said, folded his arms over his chest in a mimicry of a body being laid to rest, and stared hard up at the ceiling. “I have never been wrong about this. Never.”

Matsuda huffed, but didn’t push his luck. L represented something way beyond a brick wall. The man might as well have been his very own fortress. One would have an easier time turning water into wine than getting the world’s greatest detective to admit he made a mistake.

“Hasn’t Light-kun done enough? He’s been in that cell for almost a month… whether you think he’s Kira or not, this isn’t getting us anywhere. Aizawa-san’s pretty mad. Mogi-san’s ornery, too, but he doesn’t show it too much. So… what are we going to do?”

“I’m thinking,” L replied, with a certain exhaustion in his voice that Matsuda hadn’t heard before. “I am thinking about it. It won’t be for much longer. First, I… I have to understand.”

Matsuda sat up. He moved himself so that he could lie across from L, propped up on his elbow and cheek in his hand.

“Understand what?”

“I don’t know,” L admitted, and placed his hands on his temples. “I have no idea. God, sometimes it all feels beyond me. Me, of all people. It doesn’t make any logical sense.”

The words were spoken with a kind of anguish, or insecurity, or something else terribly intimate behind them that Matsuda couldn't possibly decipher. L understood that right away, at least judging by the way he turned his back to the young officer again and adopted his usual, vacant expression.

They sat in silence for a while longer. Matsuda breathed in, caught the heavy scent of strawberries that clung to L like a vice, and felt his head swim. He dared to ghost a finger down L’s spine.

“Thank you,” Matsuda said, softly. When L made an inquiring noise, he continued, “Y’know. For telling me, um… that.”

L rolled over. He placed his hands on Matsuda’s face without decorum, and stared up at him with his wide, searching gaze. Matsuda went clammy beneath the scrutiny. 

“Thank you for listening. I suppose,” L ventured, and exhaled. “Don’t… tell anyone else.”

“Mm… my lips are sealed,” Matsuda managed.

When L made no move to pull away, Matsuda covered the hands with his own, and brushed his thumb across the detective’s bony knuckles. They both relaxed into the bedsheets.

“I would like to kiss you,” L said, so far under his breath that Matsuda believed he hallucinated it.

“Wha… uh, hahah… what was that?”

With the severe look he received, Matsuda expected L to pull away then, to disappear the way he always did. Instead, cool lips pressed to the corner of his own and lingered there for a few long seconds. When L withdrew, Matsuda’s pinky ran over his wrist, cataloged the subdued tremors in his arms. Maybe the most flustered L ever got; hardly visible to the naked eye, but Matsuda could feel it. 

“I want to kiss you,” L repeated, and Matsuda felt the brush of his lips on his jaw again, the tentative warmth of his mouth. 

Matsuda didn’t need to be told a third time.


End file.
